Friday, 29 June 2012

Are They Paranoid, Or Is The Government Really Out To ‘Get’ Them?

Extra training is being given to NHS staff after the number of assaults and threats against mental health workers in Lancashire reached a two-year high.

Oh? Such as?

Susan Rigg, the trust’s peformance management director, said: “We are taking this matter seriously with discussions within each network being used to investigate reported incidents.

“There is currently an analysis of the trend of violent and aggressive incidents across the trust.

“Certain key areas have already been identified which should be undertaken to improve staff and patient safety.

“Staff training is to be reviewed to ensure that staff fully understand recognising aggression triggers, appropriate engagement and a physical skill that is used as a last option.”

For the commenters, the cause is obvious. It’s the cuts, innit?

Michael@ClitheroeSince58 says...
The problem is that people with mental health problems are becoming very paranoid and feel they are under threat with the cuts, things have become so bad I have had to disconnect my phone due to one particular person ringing me in the middle of the night worrying and stressed, but that don't help me when I have to get up at 6:30am I feel most of them have nothing to fear but something seems to be going wrong regarding communications and it needs sorting fast be fore more harm is done.

Am i in yet..? says...
Maybe the rise is due to benefit cuts and the inadequacy of the company left to assess claimants.. If they decide that a person is fit for work and the person is not fit then that said person is left with no help or means to gain a living. That person out of desperation might go to the extreme of either attempting to commit suicide and run the risk of nobody turning up to save them from themselves or assaulting an NHS worker rather than risk being arrested for assaulting a member of the public and going to prison simply to make themselves unemployable. If that is the case then the whole system of the assessments is questionable and its most likely the cause of rising assaults on members of the mental health teams. Or it could be that they are not well enough to have their benefits cut and they shouldn't have been in the community to begin with however there is nowhere else to put them. It was Thatchers government that closed all the mental health units releasing thousands of unstable patients into the community during the eighties and nineties. You can't just shut places like Brockhall and Calderstones without having repercussions a decade or two later in life. If places like Calderstones and Brockhall were running at full capacity as they once did and it was a simple process to send people there who claim to have mental health problems as they once did am 100% sure that we wouldn't have as many people on the sick claiming to suffer with mental health problems as we do. And there would be adequate safe accommodation with the correct care that these patients desperately need instead of treating mental health patients within the community as we have become accustomed to over the past fifteen years or so.

Amazing!
The mentally-ill are not to be held responsible for their behaviour, ‘cos they is ill, innit?, yet retain enough self-control and cunning to judge which person can be safely assaulted!

6 comments:

The last comment you quote does have an interesting point about care in the community. A profoundly illiberal one the consequences of which for freedom are rather worrying but interesting.

It is probably true that if claims of mental health problems had a high chance of being taken both seriously and seriously enough for the default position to be a move to residential care in a mental hospital the numbers of false or exaggerated claims would drop sharply.

Although, I would also expect that this would deter those with real problems which could be dealt with without locking them up so that they continued to maintain as much of their normal lives as possible from doing anything about them until they became so mental as to need sectioning.

"Staff training is to be reviewed to ensure that staff fully understand mentally ill people sometimes kill other people, so be on your guard and hit them if you have to but make sure it's hard enough to take them down."

Not PC, I know, but true...and in all walks of life....so it's "Equal Opportunity" and "Non-Discriminatory", innit.

XX Good point. I see a lot of teeny-tiny girlies dressed up as PCSOs and sometimes even real police, and I wonder just what use they'd be in a pinch...XX

Because, contrary to what they say publically, the scrambled egg hatters (bosses), still live in the days when the mere sight of the uniform was, normaly, enough to quieten things down. (I don't mean dock road Liverpool at closing time on a Saturday night, but....).

They still think that lead thieves hold up their hands and say "It's a fair cop guv. It was me what dun it!" Just at the sight of a police helmet on the horizon.